Vanity Fair
by William Makepeace Thackeray
First published 1848 · English · 699 pages
- Novels
- Satire and humour
Vanity Fair is a novel set in England and Europe during the years of the Napoleonic Wars. It follows two young women who leave the same school: the gentle, sheltered Amelia Sedley and the clever, ambitious Becky Sharp, who has no money or family and means to rise. Around them move soldiers, aristocrats, merchants and hangers-on, all chasing money, rank and comfort. The narrator, who calls the story a novel without a hero, watches with irony and sympathy. It is a comic, sharp portrait of social climbing and self-deception, and remains one of the great English novels.
Quotes
Vanity Fair is a very vain, wicked, foolish place, full of all sorts of humbugs and falsenesses and pretensions.
“How can you—how dare you have such wicked, revengeful thoughts?”“Revenge may be wicked, but it’s natural,” answered Miss Rebecca. “I’m no angel.” And, to say the truth, she certainly was not.
And this I set down as a positive truth. A woman with fair opportunities, and without an absolute hump, may marry WHOM SHE LIKES.
If mere parsimony could have made a man rich, Sir Pitt Crawley might have become very wealthy.